damn, thanks for that 411 jogro.. that's basically what i had thought on both counts, just wanted a second opinion as i know i don't know everything...
i had figured that they have screens for pretty much any drug you could think of, minus some of the newer rc's possibly, just didn't know how common a test for k was, and wasn't exactly sure what mdma would show as, but thought it would be an amphet...
thanks again..
Thanks for the rep. With your mighty "rep" power, that rep literally just put me "beyond repute". Not bad for under 1000 posts, if I do say so myself!
Anyway, on screening, most drug "screening" is the so-called NIDA-5 (or at least that's what it USED to be called), which looks for cocaine, PCP, amphetamines, opiates, and cannabis, typically by urine. NIDA is the "national institute for drug abuse".
Why those five? Because in the "say no to drugs" Reagan era some govt panel decided that those were the most "popular" drugs of abuse, the technology existed to test for them, and mandated that specific testing. Consequently, a gigantic drug testing industry sprung up around that particular test, because the gov't required it to obtain gov't contracts, etc. Volume = money, and that became THE standardized test, still used today.
But pretty much any drug (or more precisely drug metabolite) CAN be screened for, so long as there is enough interest in doing so and dollars to pay for it.
Ketamines CAN be screened for in the urine, though again, someone would have to specifically ask for that test and be willing to pay for it.
Since the test isn't cheap, and since Ketamines aren't exactly the most common drug of abuse (in fact, the average "schmoe" probably hasn't even heard of them), that means in practice someone would have to have a both a specific suspicion for ketamine use and a reason to confirm it before ordering that type of screen. I could imagine getting such a test post-mortem, for example.
If they did ask for it, by the way, ketamine metabolites happen to stick around in a bit longer than the others mentioned above. Now we're conceivably talking a full week window of detection in urine, and perhaps even longer depending on dose, testing methodology, etc.